This "Rational" Test Will Make You Feel Completely Irrational

Today, I discovered something about myself — I do not, in fact, like Peter Wason, the English psychologist. Don't know him? That's probably because he's dead. But in the 1960s, he was a pioneer in his field and taught psychology at University College London. His most defining attribute? Absolute sneakiness.

Wason developed what is now known as the "Wason Selection Task," a card puzzle that determines how logical, or really, illogical, you are. One at time, test takers are presented with four cards. The first card is a five and the second is an eight — the third card is blue and the fourth card is green. After receiving the cards, the test then asks participants to evaluate the following statement, without turning over any unnecessary cards, in the most efficient way possible: "If a card shows an even number on one face, then it's opposite face is blue."

YouTube / Spiked Math Games

After reading that Wason himself called the test "deceptively easy" and that over 90% of all test subjects fail, I was determined to get it right. I even started the test and paused the clock (some call that cheating, I call it modern resourcefulness), just to make sure I fully understood the task at hand. Eventually, I decided to turn over the 8 and the blue card. My reasoning was such that if the 8 were blue on its opposite side and the blue card's opposite side also showed an even number, then I would have proven the theorem true. Huzzah.

Well, I was wrong. I'm not going to tell you why I was wrong — because that would defeat the purpose of taking Wason's test yourself , which you can do below — but I have to say, learning the answer doesn't offer that much of an "Ah-hah!" moment. I got the puzzle right on the second try — but I'm still in limbo between clear understanding and thinking the whole thing is a ruse. That may not be rational — but then again, that's what Wason set out to prove, after all.

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